Development, industry and globalisation
How development is measured, the sectors of employment, why industry locates where it does, and the role of transnational corporations.
📌 Key points
- Development is improvement in people's quality of life and standard of living, including wealth, health and education.
- Indicators include GNI per capita (income per person), life expectancy, infant mortality, literacy rate, access to safe water and doctors per 1000 people.
- The Human Development Index (HDI) combines life expectancy, education and income per person into one value between 0 and 1; the closer to 1, the more developed.
- Employment sectors: primary (extracting raw materials: farming, fishing, mining, forestry), secondary (manufacturing), tertiary (services) and quaternary (research and information technology).
- As countries develop, the share of people in primary jobs falls and the share in tertiary (and later quaternary) jobs rises.
- Industry is a system: inputs (raw materials, labour, energy, capital) → processes (manufacturing, assembly) → outputs (products, waste, profit).
- Factors affecting industrial location include raw materials, power supply, labour, markets, transport, capital, government policy and flat, cheap land.
- High-technology industries are often footloose and locate near universities, skilled workers and good transport, often in science parks.
- Globalisation is the growing connection of the world's economies and cultures through trade, investment, technology and communication.
- Transnational corporations (TNCs) operate in more than one country; they bring jobs, investment, skills and infrastructure to host countries, but profits may leave the country, wages can be low and they may cause pollution.
📖 Key terms
- Development
- Improvement in the quality of life and standard of living of people.
- GNI per capita
- The total income of a country divided by its population, usually in US$.
- Human Development Index
- A measure combining life expectancy, education and income, from 0 to 1.
- Primary sector
- Jobs that extract raw materials from the land or sea.
- Secondary sector
- Jobs that manufacture goods from raw materials.
- Tertiary sector
- Jobs that provide services, such as teaching, health care and retail.
- Footloose industry
- An industry not tied to raw materials, so it can locate in many places.
- Transnational corporation
- A company that operates in more than one country.
✏️ Worked example
In a country, 55% of workers are in the primary sector and 15% in the secondary sector; there is no quaternary sector. Calculate the percentage in the tertiary sector and suggest the level of development.
- The three sectors must add up to 100%.
- Tertiary = 100 − 55 − 15 = 30%.
- More than half of the workforce is in primary jobs such as farming.
- A large primary sector and small secondary sector suggest the country has not industrialised much.
- Answer: 30% tertiary; the country is likely to be an LIC (less developed).
When using development indicators, say whether a high value means more or less developed (e.g. high infant mortality = less developed) and support your answer with figures from the data.
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